Combining and Layering Transparent Shapes in Illustrator

Question

Sorry if my title is a big vague. I'm fairly new to Illustrator and and still trying to figure out how things work.

I have a few paths that I'm looking to layer, one on top of the other. From bottom to top I would have 1) a filled circle, 2) a transparent, outlined phoenix, 3) a filled city silhouette, 4) a transparent, stroked, city silhouette. But when I say transparent, I mean that it goes straight to a transparent background, not that it shows the objects below it.

Here is a picture of what I'm talking about:

So I want to make "What I want", but in Illustrator rather than Photoshop. I think two things that would allow me to do this are: 1) knowing how to combine two paths into one, and 2) knowing how to make a transparent fill that acts like a regular fill (it covers the layers below and can be used with clipping masks), just with "transparent background" as the fill value.

Or if there's another way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, I'd be happy to hear that too.

Answer 1

• Copy the Circle and Phoenix to a new layer - so they are both on the same layer
• Fill the Phoenix and remove the stroke (trust me)
• Select both the circle and the Phoenix and click the Minus Front button on the Pathfinder Panel
• Move the now cut circle into place... or just delete the original circle.

In short, what you need to do is remove the portion of the circle which is behind the phoenix outline. That's what the above does.